


she's wired up, she's wildfire

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Background Promptis - Freeform, Break Up, Date Night, Dating on the Sly, Dirty Talk, Dress Up, Established Relationship, F/M, Flashback Chapter, Fleurentia, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Insecurity, Introspection, Kimono, Late Night Conversations, Ms Ignis Scientia, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Romantic Gestures, Rule 63, Secret Relationship, Socially Awkward Characters, Suit Porn, dress porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-05-13 00:17:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14738516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: In whichMissIgnis Scientia tries to make sense of her life as it is now.Fortunately she has Ravus Nox Fleuret to help her take the edge off her hectic days.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notavodkashot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notavodkashot/gifts), [ItsAlwaysBloodMagic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsAlwaysBloodMagic/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ignis really doesn't want to go to her friend's house party.
> 
> She does want to get into the house, though, because Ravus is waiting for her there.

She’s still more than halfway down the block and she can already hear the pound and the bass-beat and the deep throb of music in her very bones, rattling up into her through the sidewalk -- and she’s at the corner, she can still turn back, but just as she stops and thinks of turning on her heel and walking home her smartphone rings, and she glances at the name flashing up on the screen and sighs, and braces herself for an assault on her ears, and holds the phone at arm’s-length when she answers. “Luna.”

“I can see you, Ignis, come on, please don’t turn around on me now, I told you I saved something nice for you, didn’t I? The bottle’s got your name on it and everything, and I’m not letting anyone else touch it.”

“I appreciate it,” she sighs, “but where am I going to drink it, when I can feel your house party from where I’m standing? Please tell me I can use the library.”

“I, maybe you can? I think?”

She shakes her head. “Not helping your case, dear one.”

“Please just come on in, please don’t make me go out there and get you.”

“You’re fortunate I don’t have to go to work tomorrow, because I might mean to drink myself blind tonight,” she says, and she steels herself to walk all the way up to the stately mansion and its ivy-wreathed walls, steels herself to walk right into the heart of the blaring music.

Incredibly, she can hear the whoops and the jeers of some kind of overly-competitive video game match -- she can hear simulated gunfire, and that too sets her teeth on edge -- and she marches straight into the kitchen and -- 

“I’m so happy you’re here,” and Lunafreya is holding on to her, and she sighs and gives in and returns the embrace. “Thank you for coming, truly -- I just wanted all my friends to be here with me today.”

“I know that, Luna, I know, that’s why I’m here.” She cards her fingers through loose blonde hair. “I just -- I protest everyone else’s definition of _house party_. I don’t mind you at all.”

“That’s really nice of you to say. And yes, before you ask, you can go to the library, just don’t bother Ravus, since he’s trying to forget the world exists, too.”

She sighs. “I will make do with the books.”

“You’re the best, Ignis, please take your shoes off and just -- you know I appreciate you being here.”

She does step out of her heels then. “Go back to the game room. I’m sure you’re itching to fire off a few headshots. If I wake up early enough in the morning and I don’t have a hangover, I’ll make those waffles that you like so much.”

“You really don’t have to -- there are berries in the freezer.”

“Mixed messages,” and she laughs, a little, and kisses Lunafreya’s cheek, and takes the proffered bottle of scotch and the rocks glass, and it’s easier to walk down the corridors now that she’s not fighting for her balance with every moment.

Not for the first time, she curses the dress code at the office where she’s been spending her daylight hours, and thinks it might just be time to start showing up in a man’s suit, if that means she can put on a proper pair of flat boots and not have to teeter on those blasted precarious things she left behind in the kitchen. 

(She’s been walking on high heels for a long time, but just because she’s used to them doesn’t mean she actually enjoys wearing them.)

Library doors ajar, and no one in the corridors to accost her, and she slips into the room and carefully, quietly, locks up behind herself.

“Who’s there?”

“Just me,” she says, softly. “And -- why does this bottle have your name on it, crossed out, and replaced with mine?”

“Because I bought it. And I was saving it for -- some occasion that now escapes my mind.”

She feels those mismatched eyes on her, blue and purple, and she deliberately slouches against the door, and doesn’t hide her smirk.

She wonders what he sees: the ivory pinstripes in her pale-lavender blouse, with its starched white collar and cuffs? The oversized check in her jacket and waistcoat and short skirt -- the thin outlines of large heather-gray squares on plain black? The red lace in the toes and heels of her black stockings? 

“You’ve done your braids differently,” he says, and that’s a surprise. 

“I hadn’t known you were paying attention to those,” she laughs. 

But she takes the hint, and turns around, and she ignores the hammering beat of her heart in her chest, and she points to the nape of her own neck. “Nearly sprained my own shoulders trying to do that properly,” she says. “I kept doing it in the usual style, and then I’d remember what I was trying to do and I would have to start over.”

Her words trail off, quietly, the moment she feels his hand make contact with hers, relieving her of the rocks glass: the warmth of him, the immense presence of him, and she doesn’t have to see him to recall, in vivid detail, the light-halo in his silver-blond hair. The sharp angles of cheek and jaw; the straight set of eyebrows; the incongruously bare feet. The brief glimpse of him before she’d turned away had been sufficient to show her what he’s wearing: the creamy-white of his shirt and the subtle red-and-black plaid of his suit trousers. The intricate copper-chained hoops in his right ear.

She’s wearing copper studs in her own ears, and she shivers when cool fingertips trail down the shell of her left ear, and then her right. 

“Hmm. You pulled your hair out of the way to show off your earrings.”

“You make too many assumptions,” she laughs. “If I wanted to show off, I would have worn those hoops you gave me. I don’t understand why you had to give me something I could have driven my bike through. These are invisible compared to that.”

“I see these.”

The words shiver down her spine, and she draws in a quick breath. “You’re not precisely like other people, are you? Ravus.”

“I used to curse the world because I was so different. Now I don’t feel such a need to.”

Finally, finally, there are his arms around her, wrapping gently and firmly around her waist, and not to cage her in, not to pin her down. Just to hold her, just to let her lean into him, and she tips her head back against his shoulder and she meets his eyes, and smiles. “I had to play hard to get,” she whispers against his cheek, feeling him shake and press just a little closer. “I didn’t want to rush here. I nearly did turn back, too.”

“I was getting ready to make my own excuses and leave for the night,” is his response, soft laughter around the edges. “I was sure you would turn and run, when you heard the music. I was sure that I would have to chase after you. But Luna said she’d coaxed you in.”

“With this,” she says, holding up the bottle that’s still in her other hand. She rocks it from side to side, just for the pleasure of seeing light play through the deep amber of the liquid it contains.

“Save it for later.”

Now his voice has fallen all the way down into that hoarse whisper that she knows all too well -- the rasp of it that makes her belly cramp with vicious sharp need, the rasp of it that makes her shiver.

“Ignis,” she hears him say, quietly. “You’re shaking.”

“You know damn well why,” she mutters, and even her voice is unsteady -- and how can he do this to her -- they haven’t even kissed yet, haven’t even -- 

“Turn around, please.”

She has to fight to meet his eyes -- she can feel the blazing warmth on her own cheeks, her own throat, her own fingertips.

“If you could only see how glorious you are right now.” His mouth shaping the words, his voice gone gently reverent. 

“Forget the compliments and kiss me,” she demands.

Oh, damn him for laughing! 

And she seizes his shoulders in a fierce grip and pulls him down to her level, pulls his mouth down to hers -- the gasp that travels through them, enough that she doesn’t know which one of them made it, is more than enough to drive her mad with need, with the taste of him -- he’s been drinking, he’s several glasses ahead of her if she can taste it on his tongue, and she runs her hands roughly through his hair and pulls him closer, closer still -- 

She tastes the groan, too, the sudden absence of him as he pulls away and she looks up into his dazed eyes, his eyelashes casting long shadows onto his cheeks, harsh rasp of breath that he pulls in through his half-open mouth.

“Forgive me,” she thinks she hears him say.

And he moves in again: this time he’s holding her in place, pinned against all the length of him from his shoulders on down, the heat of his skin and his muscles, the fierce throb of his groin against hers, and he’s mouthing at her neck -- she feels the scrape of his teeth and the swipe of his tongue and she’s all but fighting to get closer, closer, cursing him viciously and she has to lean on him because her legs can’t hold her up any more, and her head is falling back again and she thinks she catches an upside-down glimpse of the library doors --

“Ignis, no,” he mutters against her collar bone, and he’s hauling her up, he’s on the move, he’s bracing her against the wall next to the door and that’s a relief -- she doesn’t have to think about staying upright -- all she has to do, all she can do, is lose herself in the searing inferno of him, the heavy weight of his hands at her hips and the sharp sweet pain of the bruises he’s raising on her skin -- he yanks at her jacket, she feels it fall away and she regrets the brief piercing separation from him, but she’s winding her arms back around his neck and she’s whispering against his ear, nipping up from his earlobe and then on to the piercings -- 

“Kept waking up from dreams of you,” she hisses, and she’d say the words straight to his face if only she hadn’t been trying to disappear into him -- she’d say the words and watch him react, watch the red flush of lust overtake his face in bright blatant patches. “Even in my dreams you’re a miserable tease,” she says, smiling when he groans, sliversharp satisfaction thrilling through her, “you have me until we’re breathless, until we’re almost gone and then you leave me hanging, damn you, over and over again and I’d have to, I’d have to do for myself when I wake up, just so I could get on with my day -- ”

“Let me make it up to you, let me make up for all those frustrating dreams -- ” Slur of his words against the hollow of her throat, and the movement of his hands on her shirt buttons.

That she stops, and she looks up at him and he’s exactly in the state of ruin that she’d imagined -- blotchy flush, pupils blown wide wide wide and sporting mismatched rims of sliverthin color. 

“Ignis, you’re beautiful,” she hears him say. “You. You’re half a wreck and your hair is still -- ”

“Shall I take it down?” she asks, breathless.

“No no no, please don’t -- what do you want?”

She doesn’t answer, at least not in words: she turns around in his arms and she braces her hands on the wall. Lets her head hang down. “Have me like this,” she rasps, eyes closed.

“You and your wicked mind,” she hears him say, admiring -- he’s reaching for the zipper of her skirt, he’s pulling the material partly away -- just enough so he can reach into the waistband and feel out the shape of the last layer she’s wearing -- her favorite boyshorts that he’d given her on her birthday, silky material that clings perfectly to her and he’s running his tongue up the back of her neck, teasing.

“Gods, any day now, please,” and she’s pressing backwards into him, impatiently -- she feels him snap his hips into hers, once, and she keens out a sound that’s almost his name.

“I can smell how much you want me,” he says, and that’s the last thing she hears because he’s reaching into her underwear, because he’s dipping into the wet heat of her and she clenches her jaw tight shut against the wail that crowds against her teeth. Thrust of his fingers into her, one and two and three and he whispers, “Spread your legs a little wider, love,” and she gasps and hurries to comply.

He fits the fourth finger into her and she’s overwhelmed, every nerve going into overload as she rocks on his hand, slow at first and then he’s whispering into her ear, filthy encouragement: “Take it slow or take it quick -- take me however you want, I’m not going anywhere and I want to see you fall apart -- ”

And oh, how she wants this and so much more, so much more, and she gasps, twists her hips with every rocking motion, and now he’s moving, too: his fingers thrusting into her, his thumb tracing tight spirals over her clit and she’s starting to blur out, she’s starting to fly apart, the world splintering into bolts of shattering pleasure -- she’s no more than the sum of her nerves, winding higher and tighter into almost painful bliss -- 

His other hand, too, is on the move -- he’s drawing teasing circles over one breast and then the other, pinching her nipples in turn -- the torment of him and the feast of him, and she’s going to cry she’s so close to the edge, she’s waiting to fall -- 

“Let go, let go for me,” she hears him say against the back of her neck, and she exhales like all the air’s been punched out of her, and orgasm overtakes her like a storm of lightning dancing and crackling beneath her skin, in every wound-up nerve.

When she comes back to herself, they’re sitting on the floor and she’s in his lap, knees drawn sharply up and she kisses him, slow and a little clumsy, and she fumbles only a little when she palms the hard hot ridge of his cock over the fine material of his trousers. “And this?”

“I don’t know,” he says, laughing softly, the sound a little bit strangled and that makes her smile. “I was hoping at some point you’d let me have you. Not just, you talked about us in your dreams -- I have absolutely no intentions of leaving you unfulfilled, if that was your concern -- ”

She laughs back, and leans in -- still a little punch-drunk, still a little clumsy, but after a moment’s fumbling her mouth finds his for a series of swift and punishing kisses. “Is that a promise?”

Those eyes darken even further, and how is that even possible? “You know it is,” he murmurs, and she’s caught and pinned on the movement of his mouth, bruised from all their kisses, the marks of her teeth where she’s been biting at him. 

And it’s not enough, it’s never enough, and she leans in again and drinks in the yearning groan of him -- that’s cut off and turns into a quiet hiss, into a single fervent mutter of “Fuck,” as she undoes his flies, as she tugs his boxer-briefs down -- she grins and caresses the damp spot with her knuckles, deliberately digging in gently over his balls and he growls her name, once, only once: “Ignis.”

“Up, now, thank you,” she murmurs back, coaxing him to lift his hips so she can slide his clothes down and away, and now he’s there for her to take and she gets up onto her knees and straddles him properly, and she looks up at him, holds his gaze, and she teases herself with the head of his cock, a handful of strokes back and forth before she holds him steady, and she sinks onto him, down, slow, hissing at the hard twitching heat of him -- 

“Are you going to just look and -- ”

Low dark laughter of him that sends another jolt down her sparking nerves. Weight of one of his hands on her hip, and the other reaching for the end of her braid, winding, once, twice -- she can feel the twist of his wrist, so intimately, so teasingly. “Didn’t you hear what I said? I want to see you fall apart.”

And before she can react or even laugh in his face -- he’s moving, he’s thrusting up into her and all the thoughts unravel in her mind, unravel in every inch of her skin, like she’s kindling and he’s just set a flame to her, consuming her, and it’s all she can do to hold on -- her arms around his neck in a bracing grip -- 

Runaway beat of her heart and the harsh panting breaths of him, combined into the single counterpoint against the sounds of their joining, the sloppy beat of their bodies on the move -- Ravus is all but toppling forward into her, mouthing at her collar bone, cursing low and fervent with every hard thrust -- his hand on her hip, encouraging her to press down harder on every stroke -- 

The frustrated dreams shred away into the illusions that they really are, and nothing compares to the reality of Ravus’s eyes meeting hers, the feverish spark of his need and the contrasting softness of his smile, the words falling from his lips that swing between sweet and savage -- “Love you like this, just like this, gods you’re beautiful, let me see you, Ignis -- ”

Her eyes fluttering shut as she loses herself in the movement of him, the words of him, and then she gasps when he yanks at her hair -- 

“No, look at me, love, look -- ”

And again and again the merciless powerful thrust of him into her, taking her, the hungry edge in his stare, the tortured twist of his mouth -- 

Her hand bunched into a fist against her mouth so she can muffle her cries, the desperate mewls falling from her as he fucks her harder, faster, and does she fall over that edge once again or does it reach out for her -- the sudden impact of her climax leaves her shocked and speechless, just enough of her left to feel Ravus come undone beneath her, within her -- 

She comes to, slowly, carefully, twinge in her knees and in her heels and she’s looking straight up at the library’s ceiling, heavy weight of Ravus on her chest and it takes a long time for her muscles to get the message from her still short-circuiting brain -- straightening out her legs means she dislodges herself from Ravus’s lap, and he groans where he’s bent double over her.

Ignis has to laugh, and run the fingers of one hand through his hair. “We’re going to have to move at some point.”

“At some point,” he mutters, slow-rebellious, against her skin.

“Do you really want to be found here by -- Luna’s house-guests?”

“Maybe.”

“Liar,” and she huffs out another laugh. “Move or be moved.”

“Meh,” he mutters -- but she coaxes him back into a sitting position and watches him try to put himself back in order, even as she works on her own buttons. 

“Your throat,” she hears him say, as they’re getting to their feet -- as he picks up the bottle of scotch, and she envies him the steadiness of his hands as he carefully twists the cap off, as he pours two fingers’-worth into the rocks glass. 

“I know,” she says, and she doesn’t have to touch her own skin to be aware of the burn of impending bruises. “Ask me if I care.”

“I know you don’t,” he says, laughing, and she watches him toss back the scotch -- holds her hand out, demanding, until he refills the glass and hands it over, and she sips at it, rolls the smoke and the peat of the scotch over her tongue. Swallows, and sips again, until the glass is empty.

“Upstairs?” she hears him say.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Hand in hand up the staircase, and she ignores the music and the laughter and the shouting, and she kisses Ravus on the landing and laughs as he pulls her along in his wake.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ravus helps to host a party, tries to make friends with the guests of honor, and gets himself captivated once again by the woman he loves.

Before him, the nighttime city seems to shiver in light, in the scattering of the faint and persistent rain, in the cool temperatures that seem to seep into this room, too, with every loud whisper of the doors falling open. With every rise and fall in the conversation, with every circuit of the people bearing the elegantly polished trays of wine and cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. 

He’s looking out a window and he wants to touch the vivid colors trapped in the glass, the colors that are still so bright even with the years of the sunsets, the years of the entire edifice and its weight -- the hall only appears to be airy and soaring. He’s -- aware of the columns and the buttresses and the immensity of the weight of the roof far over their heads, the roof that supports a famed dome and the statues standing sentry around it. Kings and queens, it’s said, masks permanently obscuring their faces from view, and not even the books in their old and vivid red-leather bindings in his mother’s country manse can tell him about those statues, about the people they’re supposed to represent.

He used to fritter away his idle moments wondering what those kings and queens might have looked like. Who they might have been. What they might have done.

And what would they do, now, he wonders, with a small and bitter sigh, if they could only condescend to come down from their marble perches and see?

Out of the corner of his eye he can see another person stop and stare: caught, pinned, and not at all captivated. 

He turns away from even that glimpse, and he nurses the last drops of scotch in the tumbler that’s still in his hand, and still: his heart rebels. His mind. He can still see the entirety of that particular photograph, blown up. A macro-portrait of a micro-expression. The shift in the eyes of a child, blood on her bandages, her hands white-knuckled on a blanket. Dust in her hair and mud on her cheeks and tears that will not fall. Wariness in the eyes of a child. Pain and loss and terrible weariness, frightening enough on an adult’s face and completely devastating on a child’s.

He still remembers the brief description posted onto the wall next to that portrait. The river, the storm, the gun found next to her, the bodies of her family, the uncertain long march and no guarantee of safety waiting at either end. 

She’s a refugee. She’s protected, now. She’s alone in the world and she’s clinging to the gift of a patched blanket. 

The world outside this window sparkles, a jewel of a night.

The world in that child’s eyes, frozen forever, is nothing but fear.

What he’d give, he thinks now, what else he’d give so that the girl can leave her fears behind.

He’ll have to do more, he thinks, more than just this. Somber conversations all around him, somber expressions over the glasses and the plates and the little cocktail picks. 

Quiet cough behind him, closer than the red-stranded ropes surrounding this part of the hall, and he thinks he recognizes the voice that begins speaking: “Um. Hey. Don’t want to intrude.”

Ravus doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t frown either, and contents himself with shrugging, one-shouldered. “It is your night. This is your fete.”

“Not a fan,” says the boy in black, who slouches even further into his perfectly tailored jacket. 

“What he means is, we don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” says the boy in white. “But -- we don’t know what to do with ourselves in a place like this.”

He nods, then. “Give it an hour. If by then you still wish to leave, then let me know. I will cover for you.”

Lopsided smile, creasing the freckles above a spotless white collar. Cropped jacket, long lean silhouette of trousers, and still the boy in white insists on his rolled-up sleeves. The vivid midnight-blue ink in the skin of his right forearm, long uneven lines seeming to drip from some kind of bar code. 

The boy in black has a tattoo to match, on the opposite arm -- Ravus has seen it, in the lead-up to this evening, as the two boys had walked around and around the gallery, debating the positions of the photographs as they were being installed. “Why are you doing this?” Movement of his head, like he’s trying to indicate the hushed crowd, the presences all around. People looking at his work, and his companion’s. 

“Because it would have been me, in another time, in another life,” Ravus says, simply, and finishes off his drink.

“Dude,” the boy in white says.

“I’m not offended,” Ravus mutters. “I would like to have this conversation, in truth. Only, not tonight. Not in this place.”

“I get you,” the boy in black says. “Next time we’re here, we’ll talk.”

He holds his hand out to them, palm upwards. Not to make contact. “We will.”

And he watches them drift off, hands clasped tightly together -- nearly all the way to the doors into the great hall.

Which is still where he’s looking when those same doors admit the woman -- the silhouette of her, familiar shape, familiar piercing light in those eyes.

That go briefly wide and startled when those same boys step forward and speak to her. 

Even from across the hall, Ravus can see the lift of her eyebrow as the boy in white grins, half-turns, to point to the window, and the roped-off area next to it.

To point him out to her.

And he squares his shoulders because he’ll never be free of the need to -- make a good impression on her.

Subtle sheen of the black material of her dress: the severity of her, the elegance of her, as she cuts straight through the hall and maybe people are parting before her like she’s a blade unsheathed and ready to draw blood. 

He likes to think of her like she’s an army on the move, and the way she’s almost marching towards him only seems to reinforce that idea. 

An army of one woman, perfectly wrapped in black silk. Scarlet trim at her throat and the diagonal seam of her dress, the three elaborate closures running from her throat to stop just at her sleeve. Her fingertips emerging from the black, still stained with her day’s ink and her day’s cares. 

She should be wearing jewelry to offset the opulent dress, to add to it, and yet she’s gone without and the light soaks into her unadorned skin more deeply.

Her footsteps, silent even as she comes to a stop right before him -- only an inch away, her chin lifted and her eyes searching him from behind her spectacles. 

He wants so badly to unravel the almost ruthlessly neat chignon at the top of her head. He wants so badly to see her, sheathed as she is from her shoulders down to her feet. Long sleeves, and the ankle-length drop of her skirt. The tips of her boots, that really do not go with her outfit, but he’s learned to expect nothing less of her -- as he’s learned to expect the way she handles the silver-clasped purse in her hands, the way she’s turning it over and over, and the thump of its contents.

“Good evening,” he says, smiling a little, when her gaze finally settles on his face.

“Good evening,” he hears her say.

And: “What am I doing here?”

“Waiting out an hour,” he says as he offers her his hand: this time he does want the contact, the warmth of her skin on his, her fingers against his.

Blink. Blink. The city lights and the hall’s lights catching in the green of her eyes. “An hour?”

“I promised those two I would cover for them if they wanted to bolt.” He tilts his head a little, and watches her look over her shoulder, and he knows she’s looking at the boys clinging to each other in another corner. 

“Kind of you to do that for them,” he hears her say. “But that means I must stay the hour, here, with you.”

“Is it a hardship? Am I?”

He laughs, softly, when she closes her eyes, when she presses her lips into a thin line. “You might be. Why should I tell you? It’s more fun to keep it to myself.”

“Tease.” 

The word makes her chuckle, sweet low sound.

“Ravus,” she says, eventually, as she presses herself into his side and he can’t help but wrap his arm around her. He can’t help but keep her close. 

“Ignis.” 

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you knew them,” she says. 

“I wanted to surprise you,” he says. “But I did not put them up to -- greeting you.”

“I think I startled them when I came in.”

“I think you did. And can you blame them? You do know you cut a distinctive figure.” 

He absolutely doesn’t flinch or react at all when her hand sneaks into his pocket, when she pinches his hip. 

“Scoundrel,” he hears Ignis say.

“For you, yes,” and then he leads her back to the boys, and he excuses himself past the low humming chattering guests, and is that relief on their faces when he approaches? “Your hour’s almost up,” he says, in a low voice.

“Thank the gods,” the boy in black says. “It felt like so much fucking longer.”

“Can we go now?” the boy in white asks.

“Yes,” Ravus says. And: “Thank you for telling her where I was,” and he inclines his head in Ignis’s direction.

“She was looking for you, I could tell the moment she came in,” the boy in black says with a smirk.

“Noctis,” the boy in white says, but he’s smiling, too, and that’s at odds with his chiding tone.

“I’m pleased and honored to meet you both,” Ignis says, then. “You’re doing important work. Necessary work, with these pictures of yours. I’m Ignis Scientia.”

“Noctis Caelum,” the boy in black says. 

“Prompto Argentum,” the boy in white says. “Thank you so much for liking our stuff.”

“Not so much liking as -- reacting,” and is Ignis aware that she’s standing a little too tall, a little too controlled? The restrained movement of her free hand: alone, she flicks her fingers like she’s slashing and thrusting, words coming alive as she gestures. With the boys, however, she looks like she’s trying to control herself. “You capture too many emotions in each frame. I mean that for a compliment.”

“That’s Prompto,” is Noctis’s answer, definite and crisp syllables. Gone the slur and the slouch of him from earlier. He looks proud, Ravus thinks. “I want to learn that from him.”

“You already know how to,” Prompto says, immediately. And he’s turning in Ignis’s direction, and grinning a little more widely. “Sorry. Can you tell we’re not used to talking to other people?”

“Believe me, I understand,” he hears her say.

He bites his tongue, a little, when the red flush rises on her cheeks, there and gone again. 

“Let’s go,” he says, to the boys and to Ignis both, and he glances around and -- it’s easy to find the man who’s been waiting in the back of the hall all along. The towering presence of those broad shoulders, the long hair in its ribbon-held tail, the scarred face. 

Ravus nods, once, firmly, at his approach. “Gladiolus.”

“Hey,” is the response. “All good, Ignis?”

She’s hiding her smile behind her hand. “All’s well, Gladio.”

“Good to hear. I’m thinking you want to bail. All of you?”

“Please,” he hears Noctis say. “We’d -- rather do other things.”

“And I’ve my plans,” Ravus murmurs. 

“Gotcha. Follow me.”

“Thanks, man,” Prompto says.

He watches the boys follow Gladiolus into the lift, and then he breathes out a little, and he’s free to shrug, a little, in Ignis’s direction. “There. My duties for the night, done.”

“Thank all the gods,” he hears her say, and she’s laughing a little and holding on to his hand too tightly. “I’m not sure I could have suffered another moment in there.”

“Again, I want to make it up to you,” he says, and now that they’re here in an empty corridor he can lean in and brush a kiss against her cheek.

Only the kiss lands right on the corner of her mouth because she’d turned her head at the right moment, and if he sighs in relief, she’s the only one who hears it.

“It stopped raining when I got here,” she’s saying, low and compelling. “All I want is to walk with you.”

“You and your austere tastes,” he says, and he’s not chiding at all, not even when he calls the other elevator and pushes the button to make it an express, to send it straight to the ground floor. 

“It would’ve been unseemly if I’d said I just wanted to run for my life.”

“But how did you know that’s exactly what I was thinking,” he says, and he bows a little, just to see her start a little and then try to fight her smile, when the doors open on a deserted little lobby. Marble beneath his feet, swirling patterns of silver and gold in black-mottled stone, and his steps and hers echo, with the lack of people milling around. No one in their way as he leads her out the doors.

The world smells like sharp metal, like the earth itself exhaling strangely around them, out on the sidewalk and the sudden hiss of city wind and its smells of acid and exhaust and humanity -- wind that tosses Ignis’s hems around her feet, the stray strands of hair fanning around her face.

He can’t help but groan as he peers at her, as she blinks and looks up and then she’s touching him, her hands warm against his cheeks and she’s pulling him down, and her mouth lands on his and he’s helpless and grateful for that, and he kisses her until he’s aching for her and he never wants this kiss to end -- 

They’re in public, though, and he’s forcibly reminded of that in the long wailing screech of a car’s horn rising and then falling as it whirls past them, and he pulls away and doesn’t want to, but -- he’s seeing the sweet satisfaction pulling at the corner of her mouth and -- that’s enough, that’s something to help him settle, and he clears his throat and puts only a little distance between them. He holds her hand. “Where to?”

“I’m not sure I care,” she laughs, softly, and he stares at her, captivated once again.

Enough that he follows without protest, down the ten steps to the sidewalk and around a corner, down a quiet block of golden-lit windows and he has no idea where she’s leading him and he doesn’t care at all.

It’s a small shock when she stops in the shadow and the overhang of a tree, massive spreading ceiling of its rustling leaves, its swaying branches, its soft windsong above their heads.

“Ravus.” Gods, he could get lost on that, her voice and the shapes her mouth makes. He could get lost in her all over again. “Are you all right?”

He swallows past the lump in his throat. The feelings clawing at his chest. “Better than all right now.”

“I’m sorry I made fun of you upstairs,” she’s saying, gently. “Crowds, mm?”

“Hate them. But I’ll put up with them for your sake.” Why is his voice so deep and so quiet? What is she doing to him, and why is she so sweet? Why is she so good to him?

“The feeling’s more than mutual, believe me,” he hears her say. “But -- maybe less of the putting up with things for each other’s sake, more of -- I’m here. You’re here.”

“That’s all I want,” he says, and he kisses her again and he feels her lean into his touch, into his mouth. 

She’s enough to burn him to ash, and that’s what he wants, that’s what he needs, and he’ll be shameless about it, if she’ll let him.

He wants her to let him.

“Ignis.” There’s a rising joy in him, just to be able to say her name and to be able to put all of his feelings into the sounds of her name.

“I don’t know how you do it,” she’s saying, and she’s throwing her arms wide open to him, and he’s -- he gives in to the impulse to gather her up, to lift her a little, to press her against the wild glorious beat of his heart.

“Do what?” he asks, as he’s setting her back down -- as she clings to him, one of her hands carding into his hair and he can never get enough of that sensation, and he holds her hand there, lacing his fingers into her own.

“How you make me feel like I could fly.”

“I was going to ask you that same question.”

“Then I have no answers for you,” and she’s laughing, softly, into his shirt.

“I don’t care,” he says. “As long as I can have you then that’ll be all I want.”

“Oh gods,” he hears her say.

She’s pulling away.

He feels the rain, sudden and cold on the back of his neck, and -- he can’t move.

He’s too busy taking in the smile of her, the light in her eyes, the weight of her hands over his heart.

Like staring at the portraits in the exhibit hall, but better: because here is Ignis alive and alight and he could ache all over with wanting to be wrapped up in her. 

Better because she’s looking back at him and he can’t find the words for her, except: “Love.”

“Damn it,” she says, then, words exploding from her, and she kisses him again like a conflagration, and he pours himself into her, helplessly.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flashback chapter: in which Ignis has her heart comprehensively broken, and in which Ravus helps her run from her demons. 
> 
> (Also, in which they finally ask each other out on a proper date.)

She opens her eyes on a very small and very quiet gasp, and -- nearly doesn’t hear the sound of it, the sound she makes, and she definitely doesn’t recognize the room that she’s in. The room that catches the swaying shadows of the gauze-like curtains, ceiling-to-floor panels blowing inwards on the shift of the breeze. Open windows and the constant crash and sigh of the waves. The grit of salt -- not just the trails dried stiff on her cheeks but also the grains caught in the corners of her mouth. Glittering taunting on the backs of her hands.

Twinge of pain in her shoulders as she turns her head, as she stares at all the open windows. Stares past them to see -- piled-on layers of gray, a sky full of shadows and roiling clouds, and beneath that, a long sweep of shallow-rolled shore, down to the white-foamed peaks of the waves crashing and coming and going.

Before she can even process any of this, any of the hows and whys and wherefores, there’s a distinctly human mutter -- wordless, but human anyway -- and something catches in her chest when she realizes that she knows that voice, that she knows the weight in her lap. 

Head and shoulders upon her: faint light catching and catching in those strands of hair, white against sleep-flushed skin. 

Ravus sleeps -- like a corpse, she thinks, irrational hiccup in her thoughts. He’s almost rigid where he’s occupying most of this bed, his feet hanging off the further edge. Hands crossed over his belly, knees turned out at opposing angles. 

How, how had they gotten to this point? 

The faraway streaked hints of dawn-light in the few-and-far-between breaks in the clouds make her think of the slow stealthy approach of morning: but maybe not the sun, if the insistent smell of rain on the breeze is any indication. Morning, which means the previous night is all but over, and -- she takes a deep and silent breath and tries to make sense of that previous night.

And that’s not easy because -- the tear-trails on her skin tell her exactly what she’d been feeling. Exactly what she’d been suffering through. 

She’d like to clap her hands over her ears now because -- now that she’s awake, now that it hurts to swallow around the feeling of thorns gone stiff and matted and tangled in and around her throat -- she doesn’t, she doesn’t want to hear the words from the previous night. Words that hadn’t even been delivered in person. Words in a voicemail message, delivered to her phone. 

_I know I’m a coward. I know I’m doing it all wrong. You have every right to hate me -- I know I hate myself for doing this to you. I, I can’t hate the years, I can’t regret the years but I regret that I let it all come to this. I let myself hurt you and I’ll regret that always and -- I wish I could have done this better. I wish I’d loved you better and treated you better. I can’t look you or anyone else in the eyes and -- I’m sorry. I’m sorry. This isn’t what I wanted. This isn’t what you wanted. I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry. Goodbye._

That voicemail is gone but she can still hear the echoes, still hear that voice.

Fresh tears pricking at the corners of her eyes -- and the shift in her lap that draws her gaze down.

More indistinct sounds falling from Ravus’s mouth and -- she remembers the voicemail, and now she can even remember how she’d gotten here. Sitting in the passenger seat of the sleek green sports car that was Ravus’s current pride and joy, and the harsh lines in his face as he’d raced them out of the city. The visible tic in his jawline and his hands clenched white-knuckled on the steering wheel -- and the startling quiet in his words.

“Ignis. Whatever you do between now and tomorrow -- forget I exist and do it,” he’d said, quiet, intense. “I’m just the driver. So don’t bottle up your feelings on my account. You need to react, now, and -- do it however you need to, and I will not judge, and I will not remember.”

And -- the engine had roared and the wind had shrieked and he’d kept his eyes resolute and steadfast on the road that unspooled ahead of them, and she had cried herself weary and silent before they hit the last stretch of seaside highway, so she could only stare silent and hurting as he’d pulled into a driveway and motioned her through a delicate ironwork gate, onto paving stones in rough shell-shapes, and -- into this very room. 

She remembers, now, the vague presence of him, coming and going and not a word coming out of him, not a sound, even as he left various things on the floor next to the bed. A pitcher of water, a bottle of wine, a plate of toast and eggs over easy, a jar of marmalade, spoons and forks and knives.

And she remembers reaching out to him at last, after the worst of the tears had passed. Remembers her fingers closing on empty air because he had been moving towards the door, and he’d only stopped when she’d rasped out the one word she could manage: “Stay.”

Even then he hadn’t had any questions for her. Creak and give of the bed behind her as he’d sat down.

He’d stared out the windows, silently, right next to where she’d fought to get all the sobs and all the tears over with.

And after? Those details are out of reach. She can guess. Taking up a corner of the bed, and working her way through the makeshift dinner he’d made for her. Sleeping, somehow, with his head and shoulders in her lap as they’d used to do, in the years of growing up in adjacent little gardens, the window of her room permanently thrown open in the direction of his, the extra toothbrushes they’d kept for each other. Pages of homework left behind in his and her handwriting, pencil-lead debates in the margins and collaborative proofs.

Her back hurts, her neck hurts. The back of her head and the spaces in her skull around her nose and her mouth. The corners of her eyes.

And she has almost no tears left in her. 

Only the urge to card her fingers through Ravus’s hair.

She’s reaching for his shoulder when he opens his eyes.

Shift of him, looking back at her -- she doesn’t smile at him. Can’t find the strength to say anything. All she can do is shrug, lopsided, worn out.

He doesn’t smile, either -- but something soft seems to crinkle at the corners of his eyes, where he must be seeing her upended. “I’ll see about breakfast.”

“No,” she hears herself say, then, and the word startles her.

White eyebrow, lifting.

“You said you wouldn’t judge.”

“I will not,” she hears him say. “Whatever you say, whatever you do. I said so.”

“Then don’t leave me.”

She watches him settle -- on the pillows this time -- and she feels that strange pang, again, more distantly, and she lets it go.

Lies down next to Ravus and lets the last of her tears flow.

“Can I?” 

“Ignis,” she hears him say.

“I,” she says, and she touches the back of her hand to his.

“You used to hold my hand when I was -- not well.”

“Yes,” and the word comes out around another sob and she’s too tired and too numb to feel embarrassed.

So she clutches back when he wraps both of his hands around hers, and somehow the world goes softly and gently dark around her -- 

The next time she opens her eyes, the room is filled with weak sunlight, low in the sky. 

And she shifts on the pillows and -- Ravus’s hair is damp, where he’s sitting beside her, and there’s a towel draped around his shoulders, and he’s looking intently at his phone and his lips are moving -- until he glances back in her direction and then he’s nodding. “My apologies. You fell asleep and I took advantage. There should still be some hot water left.”

Fierce throb of pain in her head as she tries to sit up, and she hisses and digs her fingertips into her temple, to no avail -- 

“Ignis, don’t,” and there’s a cool damp cloth being pressed to her forehead, and it’s only after she takes a shaky breath that she smells the salt and the simple grass-flower scent of soap, the faintest hint of musk, and she realizes that Ravus is holding his towel to her skin.

“I’ll get you some water,” he adds, and she stares at the space he leaves behind in the room, on the bed, until he returns and takes the towel back. Condensation on the tall glass, two little white tablets, and she takes the painkillers, drinks all the water down in one gulp.

“Better?” he asks.

She wants to hide in the pillows and -- instead she taps his knee with her damp hand. “May I?”

“Yes.”

Bone and warm skin and bunched-up muscle beneath her, slow release of tension in him as she settles into an almost comfortable position, and she blows out a long low controlled breath and lets her tension and her tears go, too, and she only has thought enough to ask, “Surely there are things for you to do back in the city.”

“Yes, there are; but none more important than this.”

“Be serious,” she murmurs, and there’s a part of her that wants to press her cheek into his skin, and she carefully ignores it.

“I am, Ignis.” And: “I would never be so crass as to -- go looking for that person who broke your heart. But perhaps a warning would be in order. If I ever see him I’ll deck him.”

“Don’t do it for my sake.”

“I’ll do it because it’s what I want to do. Have wanted to, since last night.”

She sighs. “If it happens once it’ll happen other times, Ravus, and you can’t go hurting the world because it hurts me.”

“Try and stop me,” she hears him say. “You shouldn’t be hurt just because you saw fit to -- to love someone.”

There’s nothing to say to that, and there’s everything to say to that, and instead she just takes his hand again, and gives in to the temptation to press a fleeting kiss to his knuckles. “Thank you, Ravus.”

“Call on me again, Ignis, should you have need of me.”

“Even for this?”

“Especially for this.”

*

She traces a fingertip over the whorls of brown-and-gray grain in the honey-blond wood of the counter, and pours herself a little more tea, and behind her the night blares out its music and its lights and its conversations and there’s an empty seat to her left, in this crowded hushed sashimi bar.

When had she started to sit on the right, anyway? There’s no real logic to it, especially in this place: it means she’s sitting right next to the angle of the counter and the wall and there’s an open space next to her that, theoretically, anyone can take. Some anonymous person to sit in.

She’s placed her laptop bag on that seat and it means she’s holding it for someone else, but that’s not her normal thing. For a long time now she’s sat wherever she wants, and never had to worry about clashing elbows.

Except that she knows someone in the world who’s had his right arm broken twice in the last three years, and the bones in that arm are screwed and plated back together in several places, and it’s taken him the better part of three years to learn to do most things with his left hand.

Oh, he can still write beautifully, right-handed as he had originally been taught to do -- but that’s about the limit of that arm, of his arm. That’s about all it can take. Anything else he wants to do, he has to do with his left hand, and she’s been there for some of it and she’s not quite done admiring his resilience quite yet.

“This seat taken?”

She doesn’t even look up before rolling her eyes. “Yes. My laptop is waiting for its order.”

“I wonder what your laptop would recommend, then.” 

And she snorts quietly and stows the bag between her chair and the wall. Watches Ravus fold his frame onto the freed-up spot, and nod at the person behind the counter -- who steps over and smiles and says, “She already ordered for you, and we were holding it for your arrival.”

“Thank you,” she hears him say, and then he’s tapping the knuckles of his hand to her arm. “I’ve kept you waiting again.”

“You’re paying for my dinner,” she says, simply, and smiles when that gets her a chuckle. “And I’m not finished eating yet.”

“All true.” Laughter, quiet and warm and -- 

The thought strikes her just as they’re both presented with elegant wooden trays and a rainbow of fresh-sliced fish, dishes of pickled ginger and soy sauce and wasabi, and next to her Ravus is his usual polished and cool self as he orders a beer -- but to her he murmurs, gently, “Do you mind that I’m drinking? In my defense, I really need it.”

“I’ll drive if you can’t,” she says, torn between needling him and being just as warm, and he looks at her with something almost like relief in his eyes, before he picks up his chopsticks with his left hand and starts eating.

Warmth, she thinks. Bantering like the clash of swords. Ravus had suggested dinner at this very place and had only shown up a few minutes late, which she can’t honestly begrudge him. She’d taught herself how to drive his roadsters. 

Conversations on her phone and on his tablet. Inside jokes from their years in school, that they’d simply resurrected and spindled and mutilated. She’d filched the book in her purse from his loft. He’s given her things like her favorite coffee to-go mug and the fragrant aloeswood comb she’s wearing in her hair.

“Ignis,” he’s saying, and they’re exchanging wooden trays and she’s popping a piece of fish into her mouth and he’s eating the rest of her portion, and -- 

“Ravus?” she asks now, heart beating triple-time in her chest. “Is this a date?”

He puts his chopsticks down with a click that she can suddenly hear like it’s too loud.

And he’s smiling that same soft smile at her. “Not this. Not tonight. But the art show. That, I was planning to ask you out on. A proper date, with your permission.” He laughs, a little, and she leans into the sound of him. “What made you ask?”

“I can’t pin it down,” she says, she confesses. “But perhaps I have just suddenly realized that tonight is -- three years to the day, when you drove to the seashore like there were demons chasing you.”

“Like there were demons chasing _you_ , Ignis,” he says. “I was -- not exactly willing to let you go, in the morning. I wanted to stay. I wanted to see you safe.”

“I was a wreck.”

“Yes.” Quirk of his mouth, not a smile, but nothing at all mocking. “I wanted to -- watch your back. Just as you’ve always watched mine.” She watches him gesture with his right hand. “You were the only one patient enough for this, for all of this.”

“Was I,” she says, and she takes that same right hand in both of hers. Brushes his knuckles against her own cheek. 

“Ignis.” This time, her name in his voice is sweet, and when she looks up to meet his gaze there’s something better than warmth to see.

Something like trust. 

Something like courage.

Enough that she gives it back. “Will you go out on a date with me?”

“Yes I would. And I would remember every moment of it, and hope for a repeat. For more than one.”

“That might be arranged,” she says, and she smiles when he kisses her hand.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ravus feels like he's sneaking back home. 
> 
> (Wait, home? Is *she* home?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to Tumblr [here](https://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/post/175543296426/this-is-like-the-softest-ravus-i-will-ever).

Cold, and that’s the startling thing, so cold for such a gewgaw, tiny new weight on the chain that’s coiled in the bottom of his pocket. Cold color winking up at him, dark green where all the other keys he’s carrying are the usual steel-gray, and he runs his fingertip once again over the pattern of notches cut into the blade, tip to shoulder.

Dark green key, still too pale and pallid and lifeless in comparison to –- those vivid shades he knows.

Sixth floor. He’s worn out from the day and he’s worn out from too many emails and too many contentious phone calls, so much so that he’d completely ignored the stop-and-start tedium of late-evening rush hour, and it feels like blinking, in the transition from his corner office to these staircases winding up to the top floor of these walk-up flats. He doesn’t feel the slight burn in his feet or in his calves or in his knees; he doesn’t even think about the fact that he needs to catch his breath a little, or that the wind’s picking up and now every time he inhales he feels the cold creep further into his chest.

But all his mind is focused on the dark green key that corresponds to a door painted ivory. A door at the T-shaped intersection of two corridors.

The key that fits neatly into the series of three locks on the door, opening with a series of firm clashing clicks, and Ravus slips into the little foyer, the little space of mats on the other side and the mostly empty spaces on a narrow set of shelves. Shoes off, briefcase down, smartphone and tablet and his reading glasses in their little case.

Rooms full of silently soughing shadows: curtains on the windows and the sigh of the wind. The faint scent of flowers, sharp and sweet night-musk. Lavender, lingering in these sharp corners, on the edges of the neat piles of books that seem to be everywhere, but he threads the path without even thinking, without needing to watch his feet, and maybe he should be feeling the stir of unease in his gut because – there are no lights, there are no sounds –-

He rounds the last makeshifted corner, the arrangement of bookcases and the scratched patina of the folding screen, four panels decorated in black and the images of swirling brocade-patterns in red and green and gold, and –- here is the reason for the silence in this flat.

He’s suddenly grateful he thought to check all the locks on the front door three times, just to make sure that everything’s secure, because he would never forgive himself if he even left the barest sliver of an opening, of a threat, of an opportunity to disturb the low-slung bed, the gathered duvets, the woman laid out in the dim glow of a bowed-down lamp.

Even when she seems to be completely dead to the world, Ravus thinks, even when she’s completely wrapped in sleep, Ignis still seems to be caught in the snarls and the snares of whatever it is that makes her worry: every line of her is curled and tense and he feels the sympathetic misfire in his nerves, the sharp twitch of pain in the back of his head, tension coiling and coiling and –- some impulse makes him move quietly, makes him shed his suit jacket first of all and try to lay it over the jut of her shoulder, the loose clench of her fist.

Ignis, sleeping, and all the lines in her face are pulled together into tight knots. Eyebrows and the downturn of her mouth. The creases in her half-undone blouse, with one of the collar-points sticking drunkenly out toward her ear. Pinstripes in her clothes to match the pinstripes in her bedding, and the fold of the blanket that’s been blown over her left foot.

Something squeezes hard and clawed beneath Ravus’s heart, and he doesn’t have any names for it, and he finishes getting undressed and he knows how to do this in near silence but he’s clumsy now, stumbling half-blind, and he drops his keys on their chain and they ring, unforgivably loud, when they hit the floor next to his foot –-

Groan, and the rustle in the bed, in response. The quiet low curse that almost makes him recoil –- but he meets Ignis’s eyes squarely, where she’s sitting up and staring at him and holding his suit jacket in her hand like it’s a shield.

“Forgive me,” he says, quietly.

“Ravus.” His name on her mouth, rough edges, nothing at all like a reprimand. “I wasn’t expecting you for some time yet.”

“I was not expecting to be here, either,” he offers, and he gets down on one knee next to the bed, and taps on the pillow that she’s not using. “May I?”

She opens her arms to him, like she’s a child wanting to be soothed, and –- it’s not the first time he’s seen her like this, it’s not, and he can count the times she’s done this on the fingers of just one hand, and he takes his jacket and puts it aside. Replaces it with himself, where he climbs in next to her, where he pulls her in and lays her over his heart.

Sigh, too quiet, too lost in the way she pushes closer, and he lets her tangle them together, shoulders pressed together, arms and ankles intertwined.

The day’s cares peel away from him as she pulls him down into a kiss –- one kiss, too brief, too quickly broken where she turns her head aside and presses the back of her wrist against her mouth to stifle a yawn. “Forgive me as well. It’s been a long day.”

“Is there any other kind?”

“Since you ask.” Shake of her head against him, and the movement crumples and tugs at her hair and he gives in to the need to soothe her.

Perhaps he does so in order to soothe himself, too: at least she benefits, at least she calms, when he runs his fingertips over the loose ends of her hair, over the fine strands sticking out at her temple in unruly bunches.

“You are tense,” he hears her say, just as her breath starts to even back out.

“I’m trying not to be,” he says, quietly.

“I know. Still. That you spend your days like this is -– I couldn’t enjoy the thought. It’s unfair.”

“Thank you,” and he means it, and he presses kisses to the top of her head, appreciating the directness of her, the kindness of her.

She’s shifting in his arms, she’s pulling herself up, and he drowns in the depths of her regard: and sometimes even their friends talk on corners, and say that Ignis lives behind too many walls and too many considerations, and he counts himself lucky that she’s let him in somehow, even when he’s stumbled and even when he’s been outright offensive.

They don’t get to see her like this: they don’t get to feel her fingertips against their mouths. They don’t get to see her tilt her head, acute and gentle, sweetness in the pressed-thin line of her lips. They don’t get to feel her kisses, soft darting touches to cheek and temple and forehead and eyelid. They don’t get to feel her hands where they’re curved carefully, as if holding something small or something delicate.

He doesn’t waste a moment in pitying them, whoever they might be: he just leans in, his cheek against her temple, and breathes her in.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ignis is, for once, left speechless and grateful.
> 
> (And there's a witness to the occasion who isn't Ravus.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to Tumblr [here](https://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/post/175967239821/oh-hey-apparently-i-have-a-tag-for-this).
> 
> Kimono reference [here](http://kagayuzen.tumblr.com/post/175829764693/kaga-yuzen-kimono-kenji-maida).

Movement of her hands as she rereads one paragraph and then another -– as she immediately skips from one page to another, the narrow break-space flashing past as she scrolls down with the mouse –- she’s hitting Control and the S key before she can even really register what she’s doing, and then there’s a quiet chirp and she clicks out of the word-processor window.

Flashing alert in the instant-messaging window and she rapidly parses the incoming message, and then she’s reaching for the volume-toggle on its wire, snaking from the headset and its elegant little boom-mic near her mouth and she murmurs, “Did she give a deadline for this?”

“I’m going to assume it’s the usual deadline,” is the reply, and the words, Ignis thinks, are only languid in sound and in shape and in accent. 

She wonders, not for the first time, how many keyboards Aranea’s had to replace in the year and change of this particular work assignment, because the woman’s an absolute fiend and wonder with words (even if the words are drier than business reports and project-update emails) and –- she wears out letters and numbers and punctuation, and Ignis has bought her drinks several times on sheer pure amusement value, and right now they’re coming up on a major deadline and she can’t help but be concerned for the state of Aranea’s desk.

(Not Aranea’s mind, though. That’s not something that Ignis will ever be concerned about -– although she doesn’t want to go through the weird existential angst of _that one night_ with the two joints and the half-dozen boxes of Chinese takeout and their laptops networked together to run a specific suite of statistics programs again. Anything but that, honestly, and Aranea still has the resulting pages of data analysis and she’s never let Ignis look at them.)

“The usual deadline?” Ignis sighs, then, and doesn’t care that Aranea can hear her clearly. “This is going to be -– painful.”

“Ibuprofen, now, unless you haven’t eaten anything -– which is a fair guess because I know you.” Beneath the acerbic words –- is that a hint of kindness? Is that a hint of worry? 

Ignis smiles, tightly, and reaches into the left-hand drawer of her desk. Unwraps a granola bar. “I’ve been eating. Still have the scars from the last time you stomped on me.”

“Good.”

So Ignis eats that bar, and another one, and a handful of almonds from the small plastic lunchbox she’s set next to her handbag besides, and she pops the painkiller and wipes her hands and mouth clean and gets back to work, and the emails fly from her hands, from her keyboard, out into the digital blank space and she can hear the staccato of Aranea’s work and then –- 

“Hey!”

Ignis blinks. “Yes?”

But before Aranea can answer, Ignis understands the harsh ringing, the obnoxious buzz, and she blinks at her own hazy reflection on her laptop’s screen and says, “I didn’t order anything.”

“So go find out what’s going on,” Aranea says.

So she finds herself hitting Ctrl-S once again, and then she catches sight of herself in the glass of her door as she pushes out of the little corner office, and –- what a relief and a shock it is to be able to stretch, arms and wrists and shoulders, ankles and knees and hips, and she walks to the main door and squares her shoulders –-

Green uniform on the other side, startled blink beneath a green cap, and only after she asks, “Yes?” does the boy offer a battered black tablet. 

“Package for Miss Scientia?”

“Who ordered it?” she asks, as she tries to make sense of the image of the label on the screen. The sender field only indicates a re-shipping service, originating in –- Japan, of all the places, and not even one based in Tokyo. “How big is the box?”

“It’s that one.” The boy hooks his thumb over his shoulder.

The box is large but it’s flat, and it comes wound around in several lengths of twine, the better to pick it up with, she supposes. Some creases in the corners, some damage to the outer corrugated material, but it’s intact, and mostly manageable. 

So she signs for the package, because her name is in the receiver field, and she dismisses the boy with a small smile and a discreet tip, and –- the box is surprisingly heavy, for its dimensions, when she takes it back to her little workspace.

There isn’t even room atop her desk for the thing. “I don’t know who would send me a package,” she says, in the direction of her mic and her headset.

“Put me on camera, I can see it with you,” is Aranea’s immediate answer.

“Nosy,” Ignis chides, but she complies with the suggestion, and she turns another light on so Aranea can see better. “All right?”

“Yeah, now open it up, I’m dying over here.”

“Is this my package or yours?”

“Oh so it’s your package now.”

Ignis rolls her eyes and reaches for a boxcutter, and –- the twine gives way, and she cuts out the section with the shipping labels and puts it next to her laptop; the plain brown packaging gives way to bubble wrap and then –- 

Aranea whistles, the sound a little distorted by distance. “Pretty. What the hell comes wrapped in muslin and bubble wrap? Fragile things?”

“Smells like -– cedar,” Ignis mutters, and she switches to her pen knife and slits the muslin open along a seam that’s been basted closed –-

Cedar shavings in a pouch the size of her hands, which is tacked into one side of the wrapping cloth -– and once she pushes it all aside her mouth goes dry and her tongue cleaves to the roof of her mouth.

“Hey, are you still there? What the hell am I looking at?”

She blinks, a little, in the direction of Aranea’s voice, and then -– she rises to her feet and holds up the item that had been in the package.

Even just holding on to the material in her hands she can feel the ripple and the exquisite weight of the silk. Blue of a spring-morning sky, overwhelming her senses; the smell of cedar and the beautifully stylized flowers and vines in their rich pastel hues; the structure of it, the collar and the sleeves and the entire length of it, and the desire to press her face into the kimono is almost overwhelming.

“It’s a kimono,” she whispers in Aranea’s direction. “It’s the kimono I wanted to get last year.”

“What, the birthday present? You got something else, so -– why do you have that?”

“I don’t know,” she says, shivering, although -– a thought strikes then and she reaches for her smartphone and says, “Aranea, I have to make a phone call.”

“Oh, right, I’ll leave you to it -– but be sure to tell me the details later,” and then she hears laughter and a loud click and she glances at the laptop -– the call’s been disconnected.

Only one possibility. Only one person. 

Ravus picks up on the second ring. “I only have one request,” she hears him say, quiet and gentle and -– not at all as smug as she’d been expecting. “That is, that you’ll consider wearing that, and letting me see that you’re wearing that.”

“Why,” she begins.

“I wanted to. I hope it’s the right one.”

“It’s perfect,” she says, and she closes her eyes and laughs and adds, “ _You’re_ perfect, damn you.”

“I disagree, since I’m speaking to you.”

Ignis laughs, helplessly.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ravus finally gets to see Ignis in a full kimono ensemble, and now he understands a little bit more about her complications and her whims and her dress sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. I wrote this just for the kimono and hair decorations and so here are a few references. 
> 
> Ignis's kimono outfit is, for the most part, based on [this](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/66664165463/kimononagoya-shimaiya), though I changed out the obi for something vivid, something very much like [this](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/37416166972/thekimonogallery-silk-kimono-with-stylized). Her hairstyle and her hairpins were inspired by [this](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/14171166982/fer1972-lone-wild-goose-by-sarriathmoonghost).

Tick, tick, of the watch on his wrist, its gleaming weight and the sweep of the second hand over its dark gray face, and it faintly catches the dimmed overhead lights and the sheen of the buffed floor. Carpet-tiles leading off into smaller rooms branching off from the corridor, little workspaces with the blinds drawn down over the windows and doors, and there’s only one possible source for the bright light that spills out into this quiet late-hour office, a short way ahead.

The light’s not the only thing spilling out, however, and Ravus cocks his head, and tries to distinguish the two voices from each other, even as the words run headlong together.

“I mean, no, go ahead and hurt my feelings, I only went and asked a friend of a friend of a friend to find those for you -- ”

“And you’ve missed my birthday by several months, haven’t you,” and he smiles to himself at the mocking edge in that voice. “Out with it already, what is this thing you’ve sent me?”

“You couldn’t just pick them up and _look_ at them? What else do you have your eyeglasses for?”

“To see with -- and the box is marked _Fragile_! In your handwriting!”

“It is and it isn’t, and if you’re looking at the pins you know what I mean -- ” 

“I read papers, Aranea, I don’t read _minds_ , why does everyone think I can do that?”

He almost gives himself away with a chuckle -- just in time he muffles the sound with the back of his hand, and on the other side of the wall the voices continue, unaware of him, still bickering.

“I’m telling the boss you said that. She’ll be so disappointed! -- Now come on, pick the fucking pins up and put them on, I bought them for you to wear, they’re supposed to go with the thing you’re wearing -- ”

He hears a sharp _tch_. “You make fun of me for wearing kimono and now you’re interested, care to explain yourself?”

“Ignis.” The last sound, drawn-out and childish and reminding him of nothing so much as his own sister’s pout.

“All right, all right, pushy.”

“Damn right I am, just as much as you are.”

Rustling, and for the first time he hears the soft strike of footsteps on the move -- he’s familiar with the click-click-click of pumps, and with the thud of the boots that Ignis likes to wear everywhere else except in this very same office, so what he’s hearing now is entirely different. Quiet clap-clap, and he’s never heard those sounds before -- 

“Okay, that’s so not fair, Ignis, I knew you were going to look good in those things but -- right now, you, well, I didn’t expect that.”

“Am I supposed to wear them as a set? They’re lovely but -- they seem like overkill, together.”

That’s too much of a temptation for him and he steps into the open doorway, and calls her name. “Ignis.”

“Hey, lamppost,” and he barely sees the image of Aranea on the monitor, waving and laughing at him, and he doesn’t react to the nickname because he’s riveted to the woman next to the desk, the woman who fills the room up with her presence.

There ought to be a theme to the things Ignis wears -- the carefully restrained colors and the played-up patterns of her suits. That memorable dress of hers from the night at the museum, a perfect sheath in silk and slits and piping. The handful of times he’s seen her completely dressed down and comfortable, swathed in worn sweaters and ragged boxer shorts.

Heat burns in his cheeks for a moment, the surprised beat of his pulse heavy beneath his skin; he takes her in, slowly, trying to understand.

He’s known about her obsession with kimono for almost as long as he’s known her -- hard to miss out on the other notebook she carries around, ribbon-loop holding it closed around its pages and its tipped-in sheets. The cup full of sharp pencils on her desk at home, and the sleek lead holder in dark gray on her desk here. He can count, on the fingers of one hand, the number of times he’s watched her sketch out sleeve details, the lines of her relaxed and still intense as she concentrated on drawing all the needles on a branch of pine wood, or the intricate whorls of chrysanthemum petals.

But he’s never so much as _seen_ her in a kimono -- not even the one he’d given her for a gift -- and here she is in one, elegant from head to toe.

He tries to make sense of her details. The collar at her throat only looks white at first glance; with the step he takes toward her, he understands that the piece is worked in several shades of ivory and lavender. 

She’s wearing black, of course: and this particular black is patterned in small hollow pentagons done in white brush-strokes, the sides extending a little past each corner, deliberately uneven -- and when she takes a step in his direction, when she holds out her hand, the structure of the outfit becomes clear, because now he can see the front overlap in her kimono, and the straight lapels of the jacket-like item she’s wearing on top of it. The same material for both pieces, the same pattern, an exact match.

She calls his name and he looks up, and knows he’s still red in the face even as he offers her a smile. “May I keep looking?”

“And that’s my cue -- thank me later, Ignis,” he hears Aranea say, and then there’s a clicking sound, and the video-chat window closes itself.

So there’s nothing else to distract him when he looks back at Ignis and she’s smiling back -- a small smile, sweet and arch at the same time. “How do you want me?”

But before he can answer with the first thought that springs to mind, she’s squaring her shoulders and raising her chin a little, standing up straight next to the lamp on her desk -- which she turns on, and the intense light immediately draws his attention to the middle of her outfit. 

Stark contrast against the sober black and white: a wide band of water-patterned purple, with almost-jagged lines of gold and silver running along the bottom edge of it to suggest the meanders and the currents of a river; and in the center of that band she’s wearing something like a scarlet cord, securing a brooch of carved stone that reminds him strongly of jade.

Down, to her feet, and he understands the sounds of her walking from earlier, because she’s wearing white socks with odd split toes, and shoes that look like highly polished wooden clogs, with the red straps strongly echoing the scarlet at her waist.

And then she moves again -- there’s something in her hand -- he recognizes the shapes of wings, elegant black feathers tipped in white, and then the long silver-colored prongs, and he steps forward, broken out of his trance at last. “Let me help.”

“All right.”

He takes the pins from her hands -- presumably these are the fragile items that Aranea had been haranguing her about -- and he turns one over carefully, appreciating the subtle weight and the grace of it -- and then he looks up and Ignis is turning her back on him, showing that she’s gathered her hair into a simple low tail, caught and tied off just below the nape of her neck.

Steady arms, steady hands, the left and the right both, as he fixes the two pins in her hair.

When she turns back to him the pins, placed well above her eyebrows, look like two halves of a broken crown -- which was probably the whole point of Aranea’s purchase, and he tries to remember that he’ll have to thank her, as well.

But he says none of that out loud, so focused is he on Ignis, and all he says is, “I’ve seen you in many beautiful things, and you have certainly outdone yourself tonight.”

“I thought that it was about time that you saw me properly rigged out,” she says, and when she gestures to cover her smile with her hand -- with her sleeves -- he finally understands the familiar turn of her hand, the position of her wrist, the slight dip of her chin.

Ignis gestures like she’s wearing kimono -- certainly not all of the time, but in enough of the intimate and familiar moments that he can recognize the connection now.

He’s suddenly, powerfully reminded of all the times she’s poured tea, or coffee, or some other thing into a glass or a cup -- the gesture she makes of pulling something away from her hands, even when she’s wearing her tailored blouses, or indeed when she’s wearing no sleeves at all. 

Not quite constrained, not quite restricted -- but in those moments she moves like she’s sweeping an invisible kimono’s sleeves away, so she can move without endangering the rich material.

There’s something gently knowing in her face when he drags his eyes back up, past the V of her collars, past all her layers, and now he thinks he can speak his mind freely, now he thinks he can dare: and so he takes her hands. Murmurs for her ears alone, though there’s really no one else to hear them here. “I know I asked you to dinner but -- perhaps you’d let me take you somewhere else? Someplace we can lock the door?”

Rich laughter, when she whispers back. “And if I let you -- what would you want me to do?”

“I would like to -- take a close look at those things you’re wearing. And you in them.”

It’s not the smoothest line -- but it makes her shiver anyway, and close the already dwindling spaces between them, warmth of her shoulder against his chest and he sees and feels the slow deliberate nod of her. 

He ushers her out of her office, waits for her to lock the door closed, and he’s left amused and surprised because she tucks her keys and her phone into a flat wallet-like object in silver and gold, or perhaps it’s a purse in the shape of a wallet, that she fits into the top edge of her purple sash.

And when she turns to walk with him -- she laughs the moment he leaves her behind.

That’s because she’s not striding as she normally would -- he’s never seen her walk the way she does now, in rapidly advancing small steps, and he’s left staring at the movement of her hems, the ruffle and the ripple around her socked feet, as she draws abreast. 

He’s reduced to chuckles when she winks at him and hurries toward the elevators.

“You are nothing if not full of surprises,” he says, finally, when he can untangle his thoughts and his tongue, once they’re in his car.

“Thank you.” 

It takes him all of his concentration to drive her back to her flat -- he doesn’t even remember consciously making the decision to head that way -- but he blinks at her, when she laughs, and says, “Are you driving me home for me, or for the rest of my collection?”

“Can it be both?”

And his reward is Ignis laughing some more, so much so that she reaches up with one hand to make sure her hairpins don’t suddenly slide out or fall away, and he’s smiling as he parks and escorts her up the stairs and through her front door, and he watches her step out of her clogs and envies her the simplicity of that operation, where he’s still stuck having to undo the knots on his boots before taking them off.

When she motions him toward her armchair, however, he blinks. “Are you not supposed to be sitting?”

“I ought to be, but you should know armchairs and kimono do not go together,” she says as she turns on a single light. “Which is why you can take it.”

“And where will you sit?”

“Here, of course.”

Large plump cushion next to his feet and Ignis makes it look simple and easy, the way she considers it and then goes down to her knees, and when she’s done moving she’s on the cushion, somewhere between sitting and kneeling on it.

She eyes him sideways, then, and smiles. “All right?”

“Yes,” he says, watching her as she moves again -- this time to take off her jacket-like layer, and to pull the tail of her hair forward over her shoulder.

And the way she’s sitting reveals the back of her outfit to him: the dazzling colors of her sash and its accessories, and the large flat knot into which the whole thing has been tied, standing out even in the dim light of the room. 

His eyes are drawn to the exposed back of her neck, to the several inches of visible upper back between her shoulders -- and his fingers, too, as he almost makes contact with the upper edge of her collar, which seems to be dangling down. “This is a part of -- your ensemble, too?”

She laughs, low and rich and warm. “Not strictly speaking. It’s a cheat, or it’s a compromise, I don’t know the exact words. I’m not a geisha, but I’m not exactly prim and proper either, am I -- ”

“I should say that you are, but -- truly, no, you’re not,” and he laughs with her then. “I don’t mean that to be offensive.”

“I know, Ravus.” Her hand brushes his knee, leaving behind warmth, and a surge of feeling that pierces him straight through. “I’m -- playing with the whole idea,” she says. “With the language of what I’m wearing.”

“As you do with -- many of your other outfits,” he says.

That gets him a chuckle, and Ignis turning on the cushion somehow, braced on her hands to come around and face him. “Noticed that, didn’t you?”

“I can’t help it,” he says, but not to make excuses, he thinks. It’s a simple statement of fact. “You are compelling, and you seem to dress in order to display that.”

“I thought I was dressing to intimidate others -- that’s what Aranea thinks,” he hears her say, around a chuckle.

“You can do both at the same time. Except perhaps when you are -- not entirely dressed.”

“Only human,” is her response.

“Not only human, not to me.”

When she tugs on his sleeve in response, he moves off the armchair -- and he knows he’s a lot less practiced in moving from sitting to kneeling, compared to her -- but he manages to sit off his heels when he’s done moving, when he can look her comfortably in the eyes. “What is it?”

Brief glimpse of her smile. “I wanted you down here so you’d kiss me.”

“You only needed to ask.” And he reaches out to her, fits his hand to the curve of her cheek, and reels her in gently.

He’s proud, a little, of the way she leans into him almost immediately, of her hand seizing his collar, holding on as he deepens the kiss and she sighs into his mouth.

He thinks the flush in his own face must rival her own, when they have to part for breath -- he can’t see her very well anyway, because he can’t make himself pull away, because he can’t help but stay in the spaces she already occupies. 

And for that he asks: “Let me stay?”

Flash in her eyes, in her face -- the dear brightness of her, the things he still wants to know about her, layers upon layers like he can see in her collars. 

Layers that he can hear in her voice, like so many wordless nameless emotions, when she whispers, “As long as you can.”

“That -- will be a long time,” he says, he warns.

Again she leans into him -- forward, this time, her forehead against his. 

Again she says, “As long as you can.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finale: in which Ignis is allowed to reveal her hang-ups and her fears, and this is one of those nights when Ravus's blunt words are pure comfort and pure honest shelter.

Soft soughing moan filling her ears as she gives up on trying to go back to sleep -- and footsteps on the move, approaching, and she looks up and the first thing she sees is the heavy tumbler being held out to her. The shape of softly squared corners in the actual weight of glass. Deep liquid like molten gold, scent of barrel-ash and honey, tiny waves rocking from side to side -- perhaps there’s an inch of it, and perhaps there’s more, and she hesitates for only a moment before she takes it with both hands. 

Sip: and she breathes in the long-gone echoes of smoke and wood and the faintest hint of empty meadows lashed by land-blown breezes, and swallows, and her chest fills with warmth, with a pleasant steady burning.

And the presence that returns to her side is warm, too, even though the collar on his shirt has completely and comprehensively wilted. Even though his hair falls lank around his face, stray strands clinging listlessly to his cheek, to his piercings, to his eyebrow. 

So she wraps her arm around the small of his back and hitches him closer -- crams him in next to her, really -- and goes on drinking the scotch.

Watches him drink in long pulls.

Weight of his head resting on her shoulder, after, and she feels him bowing in, feels and sees the lines of him pulling in closer, curled in at her side.

Maybe she really is hearing the wind that calls and cries outside these walls, even when she’s here in the innermost room of this loft, and everywhere she looks she sees floor-to-ceiling glass.

“I thought you liked this place,” she hears herself whisper, hoarse and sleep-hushed. “I thought this was your bed.”

“You are safer than this place. You are safer than this bed. Perhaps I haven’t done enough to convince you of that.” He’s mumbling, almost. Words blurred out, and in contrast his accent a little too pronounced. 

“And so you find excuses to sleep at my place instead.” Too weary to chide, and too tired to poke fun.

She’ll let herself fall back into the creased pillows, into the blankets that smell of too much fabric softener, just as soon as she can finish off her drink.

“Why are we here again,” she says.

“You tell me.” She can feel it when Ravus hides his yawn in the shirt that she’s wearing, red henley with a large hole in one of the side seams. “You drove. I did not.”

“Your GPS got me here.”

“Hm.”

There’s nothing for it but to set her tumbler aside. To divest him of his, to not even a token protest. 

Nothing for it but to lie back down and this time, she pushes him over onto his side, and curls herself up at his back. 

His hands catching at her wrist as if to hold her in place: one arm around his upper chest, the other at his hip.

When she presses her nose briefly into the skin over his backbone, she feels him draw in a long slow breath.

And because he can’t see her, she can say, “I can’t sleep.”

“Forgive me,” she hears him say, a little less slurred. 

For a moment, she considers asking him why he needs to be forgiven -- but the thought flows away and she presses in closer, instead. Closes her eyes. 

“Bad dreams?”

She shakes her head, a little. “Not that they’re bad. They’re strange.” She tries to find the words to describe -- a city gone silent and still and choked beneath thick ash. The flicker and flare of lightning, branching, fanning -- those bolts unnaturally frozen in a sky that nearly breathes evil -- echoes of following thunder that sound like the melody of a curse. Steel cutting into her hands, into her skin, searing-hot. Sea-waves roaring, as if to echo the beasts beneath, the beasts on the move and heading her way --

Why does she dream of stumbling? Why does she feel the phantom tread of boots on her back, on her shoulders, pinning her down, trampling her?

She presses closer into him -- or does he lean back into her? He is weight and warmth and reality, here. The back of his neck is a complicated mix of scents: amber, woodsmoke, leather, and peat. The hum of the air in his lungs, the hum of his pulse, his vibrations echoing down her nerves. 

So she forgets, or tries to forget, about the sheer impractical size of the bed. About the draft that keeps pinching at her ankles, at her toes. The strange slippery quality of the sheets.

She holds him, instead, and mutters about her nightmares, and at the end of it she’s looking into his eyes -- when had he turned around in her arms? Why hadn’t she noticed him turning around?

He’s saying her name. “Ignis.”

“Perhaps I need shelter, too,” she says, after a moment.

“If you need it -- I’m here.”

“I know you are.” But she doesn’t say it to needle him. 

“May I?” He’s blurring out to her and she tips her face up to him, helplessly, drawn into the steady rhythm of his breaths as he presses his forehead to hers. Why does she want to press closer into him? He’d called her _safe_ , he’d as much as admitted she was _shelter_ , and -- how can she tell him she feels the exact same way? How can she show him? 

“I’m here,” he’s saying, he’s insisting. 

Why are the words so important?

And the more he says those words the more she wants to hear them, feel them, all the way into the very back of her mind, all the way down into the tangled roots of her soul -- 

She whispers his name, grateful, and pulls him down into a kiss.

Blank, hazy, everything goes away and she doesn’t know how to describe the sound she makes into his mouth, when she feels herself tipping over, when she feels herself landing on her back and Ravus is pressing in on her, and she can’t help but arch up into him, blind and needing and he’s pulling her impossibly closer, too -- he’s yanking her closer even as she feels her hands clench into fists at his shoulders, and all she knows is him, above her, all around her.

Every brush of his mouth against hers feels like unraveling -- feels like losing herself -- but she’s losing herself in him, where he won’t betray her and won’t let her disappear.

Won’t he?

And the very thought of it forces her eyes to fly open, forces her to catch herself and him as well, and she pulls away and doesn’t know how to ask the question on the tip of her tongue.

Of all the times to be lost for words -- 

He’s smiling, slowly -- is he going to mock her now?

Riveted to him as he licks his lips, as he shapes the words: “What do you want?”

_Home. Safety. You._

And she doesn’t answer the question because she hears herself say: “Please don’t leave me.”

It almost hurts when he pulls away, when he sits up -- it almost hurts before he pulls on her sleeve and says her name: “Ignis.”

And she feels the weight of his eyes on her -- feels it in her mind like he’s ice, like he’s winter’s heart, and she sits up as well, fear prickling beneath her skin. “I’ve spoiled it.”

“Please don’t -- you’ve done no such thing.” 

Stroke of his thumbs, his fingertips, against her skin: the corners of her eyes, the lines around her mouth. 

“I don’t know why I’m still afraid,” she mutters. The words seem to be falling out of her mind fully-formed, completely out of control. “You have been so good to me, even when -- I don’t deserve it. Even when I ask you for nothing more than a whim, or for -- a moment to spare. Which we both know you never have enough of.”

“Ignis. Have you ever known me to balk?”

She blinks at him, thrown for a moment. “Balk? Of course I have. Too many cars on the road. Too many fools in your life. How your arm hurts with every change in the weather. All of which are more than legitimate complaints. And I can’t help but feel that -- I do nothing but add to your burdens when I tell you that I cannot make heads or tails of a report, or that I have a client who will absolutely not listen to reason.”

There’s a smile on his mouth when she finally runs out of words, and she reaches out to that smile, wondering, confused. “I -- don’t understand.”

“Will you let me speak now?”

And he gestures to her mouth, as though to press a fingertip into her skin and -- stop her words, physically, just for a moment.

She nods, slowly, and she arches her neck, straightens her shoulders, bracing.

“I like it when you say things like that. When you say, _please don’t leave me_.”

Blink. Blink. She keeps her mouth closed with an effort.

“I will -- try to be forthright and clear with my feelings, because you make the effort to do so, for me, and the chances of me understanding your thoughts rise. But you’ll forgive me if I stumble over my words.”

Again she has no other answer but a slow nod.

“Thank you.” His quiet chuckle is cut short by a sigh. “I know I don’t have much time to spend with you. I am trying to be better at -- carving out all the little parts of the day that I can steal, for myself and for you. Though I seem to waste some of that time complaining to you and -- you seem to be able to take that, and me, in your stride. So I don’t mind, I can’t mind, that you call me and then spend a few moments telling me about your problems. It’s the least I could do, for you.”

“You don’t mind, truly?”

“Do you mind when it’s me?”

She lets herself think about it, then, in the way he’s describing it. “Sometimes I think I would like to -- find those people who are making trouble for you. Find them, and give them a hard time in return, like giving them a taste of their own medicine. But I never know how.”

“I feel much the same way,” and again he’s laughing quietly, briefly. “And there are days when I wish that you would simply -- drive up on your bike and come and steal me from everything that I have to deal with, or worry about.”

“I -- I would do it for you,” she says, softly. “You’d only have to ask.”

And that’s when his smile returns and she’s caught and pinned on the sweet warmth in his eyes -- sweet and sharp at the same time, like an edge of satisfaction:

“Ask me, then. Ask me to do things for you. Ask me to stay. That last, in particular -- I want to do that for you.”

She shakes her head. “I will not impose on you. I couldn’t do that.”

“I don’t expect you to, Ignis. But didn’t I just say? There are times when I would like to be there for you.” He does make contact, then -- he brushes a kiss against her cheek, and she wants to lean further into him, but he’s going on. “Life would be much easier if I could read your mind like you sometimes seem to do mine. Since that’s not a recourse, then -- I would like you to let me know if you need me. If there is anything I can do for you. And just now, you asking me to stay -- thank you for saying it. I did want to know. I mean, I’ve asked you for much the same thing, haven’t I? I ask you to stay with me.”

“Why,” she begins, and then she doesn’t know where the rest of the question is.

Twitch of his shoulder, tiny shrug. “You always tell me I can at least turn you away, when you call me up. I know I can and I’m glad that we’re clear about it. And I know I have, once or twice. As you have turned me away.”

She shakes her head, but not at him. “Because there’s no point in subjecting you to the same stress I’m already under.” 

“Precisely. On the other hand: is this one of those times when I ought to turn you away?”

“No -- I don’t want it to be,” she says, and maybe it won’t be so bad, she thinks, to raise this particular white flag. 

“I don’t want it to be, either,” she hears him say.

And that’s when she sighs, and shakes her head, and -- she allows herself to list forward, into Ravus’s waiting arms. His fingers in her hair, and his lips at her temple, and the thrum of the pulse in his throat that she can almost hear.

“Would you say,” and she laughs, a little, over the words, “that we make life more difficult for each other?”

“Yes,” and she laughs some more, because he doesn’t hesitate. “Yes, we do, but that’s because of who I am, and because of who you are.” Pause. “But let me warn you: I wouldn’t want you to change for my sake, or for the sake of making what we have easier.”

She thinks that over, too, and then nods. “Then -- thank you. For being clear. For talking about this.”

It feels like relief, to lift her chin and look him in the eyes.

Shadowed space or not, she can still see him clearly: the quirk of his mouth that looks like affection, and the lines in the corners of his eyes. 

She wonders what he sees and then -- he’s leaning in again, and she shivers when he brushes the words against her mouth: “Let me convince you?”

Catch in her own breath when she answers. “Convince me?”

“That leaving you is -- not on my mind at all. That I couldn’t consider it.”

“Depends on how you were planning to do it,” she mutters, and she kisses him before she can finish getting all the words out, before he can get any of his out.

Kisses him to stop the whirl of her mind and his, and to block out the world outside the two of them, outside this bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Snippets from this AU also appear [here](https://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/tagged/miss-ignis-wildfire-AU).
> 
> Come talk to me on Tumblr at my FFXV sideblog [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or at my main [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


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